The Criminal and the Ring of Darkness
by realflareon
Summary: An island has been cursed by a mysterious force called the Darkness, trapping those who live there inside. After years of failed attempts to break through, the king of the island forces dangerous criminals into the Darkness as a form of capital punishment, in the hopes that one of them may miraculously discover the secrets held there. This is the story of one of those criminals.
1. The Innkeeper

_**A/N:** Time for a new story! This one isn't going to get as much attention as The Bond of Brothers, but I still plan to update it at least twice per month._

 _I should probably point out that this story was pretty heavily inspired by Stephen King's_ The Gunslinger _. The plot of this story is very different than the plot of that story, but you may notice a few shared themes and character archetypes._

* * *

On the first day of March of the forty-seventh year, the criminal departed from Paradise to face the Darkness.

The criminal did not have a name. He had had one, once, but now he didn't. It had been taken from him, just as nearly everything else had been taken from him. Nothing remained to the criminal but his dark robes, the light clothing he wore underneath, a large pack bursting with supplies, and six pokéballs. He had also been given a special gift which he wore around his neck, but the criminal could not say that he was grateful for it.

An endless red road stretched out before him. It was an old, worn road, lain down a hundred years or more ago. It did not appear to be made from brick or painted concrete, but from some strange metal that the criminal had never seen before today. He could just barely see the small town several miles in the distance. Behind him stood the tall city walls of Paradise, which was the center of the island and the home of the Orb of Purity. A heavy iron gate had been built into the wall, but it had been shut and barred the moment the criminal had passed through. A few members of the city guard, dressed in white, had accompanied him outside of the city.

"Best get going," one of the guards told the criminal in a gruff voice. "You'll need to be off the road by sunset, else that collar will end your journey prematurely."

The criminal nodded. He had no doubt that his journey would end prematurely, but he was unsure it would be because of the collar. It was a black, heavy collar, as tight as a noose. The king himself had locked it onto his neck this morning with a look of disdain.

The criminal adjusted the straps of his pack, then began to step down the red road. He was a grown man, but he had never left Paradise before today. Why _should_ he have left, when the Orb of Purity protected him inside of those walls?

The Orb would not protect him now, though. With every step he took down this red road, he got a little bit further from the Orb's range, and a little bit closer to the Darkness. Nobody knew where the Darkness had come from, and in fact very little was known about it at all, but everybody agreed that it was a terrible, evil thing. If not for the Orb, it would have infected the entire island by now. Instead, the Darkness was confined to the shores of the island, and only rarely managed to seep inland. For forty-seven years, the inhabitants of the island had been trapped here, unable to penetrate the Darkness and reach the sea beyond it.

The criminal had been assigned to the job of finding and destroying the Darkness, just as all dangerous and violent men had been for the last forty years or so. In the early days, before the criminal was born, the king (who had been the current king's father) had sent armies and scholars alike to fight the Darkness. All had failed. Now it fell to criminals to try to stop whatever evil force had imprisoned them here.

He continued down the road. Overhead, the sun was bright and very hot. The town ahead never seemed to grow any larger, but Paradise seemed to grow smaller with every step. To his left and right, lush green forestry grew. The trees almost seemed to mock him with their presence. The criminal could hear pokémon making their wild noises, but he did not stop to watch. He kept his eyes forward, always forward. Forward was his life now. Forward was his job, and his God, and his father and king.

Before long, the walking, combined with the heat of the sun, made the criminal very thirsty. His pack had two side pockets, and each one had been filled with a bottle of cool water. He removed one of these bottles now and took a long drink, not bothering to savor or save it. It would only take a few more hours to reach the town, and he could refill the bottles there.

The trip was not nearly as interesting as he had been expecting. Throughout his entire life, the criminal had heard about the dangers that the collar-wearers faced. Every child in Paradise had heard of the brave outlaws who took on great, mythical pokémon on their way to the Darkness. Some children even aspired to _become_ those outlaws, which was surely a fright to their parents. But it did not seem that there was any danger on this road, aside from the collar itself. _The danger will come later_ , the criminal thought. The further you got from Paradise, the worse things became. The Darkness seemed to change people, pokémon, and even landscapes. He could only imagine how terrible it would be once he had finally left all civilization behind.

With visions of horror flashing through his mind, the criminal kept walking.

The criminal arrived at the town square with plenty of time to spare; the sun would not sink below the horizon for at least two more hours. It was a bustling little place, as all towns surrounding Paradise were. Mothers moved through the streets with their children, and pokémon went about unsupervised. The criminal continued forward; the road wove through the town and came out at the other end.

 _I'd better find a place to sleep tonight_ , the criminal decided. He grimaced as he remembered just how little money he had with him. Any respectable inn would demand more than half of what he had for a single night.

Well, that couldn't be helped. The criminal's true journey would begin tomorrow, and a good night's rest might help him survive another day. He had no delusions that he might succeed in this journey. Hundreds of men stronger than him had tried to destroy the Darkness, and all had failed. The criminal had already accepted his death, but if he could buy himself a bit of extra time on this earth, then why shouldn't he?

After asking around for a good half-hour (it took quite a while, since so many of the townsfolk fled at the sight of his robes and collar; everybody on the island knew what such garb meant), the criminal finally found his way to a cheap inn in a darker corner of the town. This place was much drearier than the square had been, but he didn't mind. In fact, he almost enjoyed the silence.

The inn was a large wooden building, and as the criminal stepped inside he realized that nearly everything was made of wood: the floors, the ceiling, the walls, the tables, the chairs, the casks, even the cups and bowls. It would not have surprised the criminal to learn that the food and drink served here was made from wood as well.

The place was quite empty, as far as he could tell. This first room seemed to be a sort of bar or restaurant. The few people drinking here appeared to be too drunk to care about the criminal's robe or collar. They spared him a quick glance, then went back to whatever card game they were playing in the corner.

The criminal stepped up to the counter. The bartender came over to meet him. He was an older man, perhaps in his late fifties. The little hair which remained on his head was going gray.

"You the innkeeper here?" asked the criminal.

"I am." The innkeeper dropped his gaze to the criminal's collar.

The criminal did not fail to notice. "Do you serve my kind? I have money."

The innkeeper snorted. "Why shouldn't I, then?" His eyes returned to the criminal's. "What'd you do to earn that collar?"

"I killed someone."

"Now, what would you go and do a thing like that for?"

The criminal shrugged. In truth, he had a pretty good reason for doing what he had done (at least, he thought it was a good reason; the king had disagreed), but he didn't feel like sharing it right now.

"Well, a bit of tit for tat, this is, ain't it?" said the innkeeper. "You killed him, and now you're the one who gets to die!" He laughed then, as though that were the funniest thing in the world.

"Will you take my coin or not?" asked the criminal. "Dusk is near. I must find an inn soon, else I'll have to sleep in the streets."

"Bah! Keep your coin, boy. I only wanted your story, that's all. Well, your story is _boring_ , son. You'll have your room here, just as every damn criminal in the past ten years has."

"That's kind of you," the criminal said, genuinely surprised.

"Kind!" the innkeeper said, and laughed again. The other patrons were starting to look over at them. "It's more selfish than generous, boy. You murderers and rapists and other scum are the only people going after that Darkness keeping us trapped on this damn island. I won't have it said I'm not doing my part to help. You'll have a room and a bit of food from me, but don't expect anything else. If you want whiskey or wine—and I know all your kind do, don't lie to me—you'll have to pay."

It wasn't exactly the kindest offer in the world, but the criminal did not require kindness. "Thank you. I'll take the food, and the room. I'll pass on the whiskey." He didn't want to waste what little money he had on something like that. Many of the collar-wearers got drunk at every opportunity, he knew, but he would at least _try_ to stay alive until it was time to enter the Darkness. "Is there anything in town I should see before heading out tomorrow?"

"Ah, it's _information_ you want, is it?" The innkeeper grinned. "I offered you food and a bed, murderer. Nothing more."

The criminal suppressed a sigh. He pulled his pack off his back, set it on the counter, and pulled a gold coin out of it. Only one, though.

It was enough to appease the innkeeper. He took the coin. "Smart man. There's a smithy not too far from here you'll want to go see. Give him my name, maybe he'll set you up with a good knife."

"A knife?" said the criminal. "I have six pokéballs with me. Why should I need a knife?"

The innkeeper shrugged. "Well, see him if you want, don't if you don't want. Makes no difference to me. Come see me in the morning if you want directions to his shop. Now you just sit right there. I'll be back in a bit with your meal and key."

Twenty minutes later, the criminal used that key to unlock the wooden door to his room. The room was quite small, but it had a bed and a table, and that's all the criminal really required.

He went to the table and set his pack down there. He opened it, then began to take out all of his supplies. The pokéballs were at the top, so he took those out first. Of the six, five were empty. The king had ruled that he should only be allowed to take one pokémon with him, and that if he wanted more companions, he would have to catch them along the way. It had not been easy to choose just one of his life-long friends to bring with him on this final journey, but in the end, he had made his decision. The criminal did not know what was going to happen to the pokémon he had left in Paradise.

He set each of his pokéballs on the table, side by side. When he reached the one that held his friend (this pokéball was marked with a bit of brown chalk), he strongly considered letting it out of its ball and allowing it to sleep in the bed with him. In the end, he decided not to.

Next, he pulled his clothes out of the bag. The criminal had only one black robe, but he had taken many shirts and pairs of pants to wear underneath. He folded them neatly and set them down next to the pokéballs. The criminal then reached into the pack (which was now considerably less full) and pulled out a few non-perishable bars of food. They were made from things like oats and granola, and probably tasted terrible, but the criminal couldn't complain. For all he knew, those bars would save his life.

 _Save my life_ , the criminal thought, and almost laughed. No, his life was already over. It would be more appropriate to say that the bars might keep him from _starving_ to death, once he had passed all the cities and come very close to the Darkness. But that was weeks away, and there was no reason to worry about it now.

He removed the half-empty water bottles from the pockets of his pack, and once he had done that he realized that there really wasn't much else to take out. The criminal peered into the pack. A dozen gold coins stared back at him. He decided there was no point in pulling those out, so he left them in.

Then the criminal stepped back and stared at the table. He could not have said why he had unpacked all of his things. Perhaps he just wanted to see what he was working with. Or maybe it was something else.

Well, whatever it was, it made him stand there for a very long time, just watching his things. He only broke out of his stupor when he heard some drunkard tripping and stumbling through the hallway outside of his room.

After that, the criminal quickly repacked his things. Again, his hand and eyes lingered on the pokéball with the brown mark. Once everything had been put away, the criminal locked his door and then stripped out of his clothes.

He crawled into bed, naked but for his black collar. It was only when he got under the covers that he realized just how tired he was. The long walk today had taken more out of him than he realized. _You'd better get used to it_ , he told himself. _All you'll be doing for the next few weeks is walking. That, and fighting._ If he chose not to walk, or if he chose not to fight, then his collar would kill him. And you never knew _when_ it would kill you, exactly, just that it _would_ if it decided you weren't moving quickly enough.

The criminal scratched at the collar, almost nervously, as he closed his eyes. Somehow, he fell asleep almost instantly.


	2. The Smithy

_**A/N:** I wrote this chapter to put off writing the next chapter of my other story. Oops. Well, if you follow The Bond of Brothers, I'm uploading Chapter 22 tomorrow, then uploading Chapter 23 on Wednesday, then the 12,000(!) word Chapter 24 on Saturday._

 _Also, I want to give a big shoutout to Laptoper321 for all the great feedback he's given me on both of my stories, both in his public reviews and in our PMs. Thank you!_

* * *

The criminal decided that he would visit the smithy after all.

He woke before dawn, dressed quickly in the dark, and felt his way to the door of his room. The hallway was dark as well, but there was at least a small amount of light from the lanterns which hung along the walls. Nobody but himself was awake at this early hour. The criminal moved through the hallway quietly, so that he would not wake the other guests staying at the inn.

He came out of the hallway and into the bar where he had spoken to the innkeeper the evening before. There was nobody here, either. The silence which filled the air was almost uncomfortable. The criminal seated himself on a stool by the counter, and he waited. _See me in the morning_ , the innkeeper had said. The criminal glanced out of one of the windows in the room. The sky was still black.

As time passed, it gradually grew lighter, and the criminal gradually grew more bored. He set his pack on the counter and rummaged through it, just like he had done in his room the night before. After some consideration, he decided to remove the brown-marked pokéball and place it into one of the deep pockets in his robes; it would be easier to get to it in an emergency. Not that the criminal expected an emergency to occur any time soon. He was still very close to Paradise, and even most of the distant towns were protected by the Orb of Purity.

The criminal continued to sit and wait. Hunger gnawed at him, but there was nothing he could do to help that. No doubt there was food behind the bar, but he wouldn't steal from the innkeeper after the help he had given him. _I'm a killer, but not a thief_ , the criminal thought, smiling at the absurdity of the situation.

He supposed that he could eat one of the bars in his pack, but it seemed wasteful to break into his supplies so soon, before the journey had really begun. No, the criminal would just sit here and bear this hunger, knowing that things would only grow worse in the coming weeks.

Eventually, the innkeeper stumbled into the room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. By then, the sun was halfway over the horizon, and the sky was a sickly purple-pink color. Dull light flooded into the bar from the windows.

The innkeeper blinked twice, then looked the criminal in the eye. "You look like a floating head, boy. Black's a bad color for this hour."

"I don't like these robes any more than you do," the criminal replied. "I wore white while I lived in the city, you know."

"White?" The innkeeper crossed the room and stepped behind the bar. "Wouldn't have taken you for a king's man."

The criminal shrugged. He chose to change to subject. "I wondered if I might trouble you for some breakfast."

The innkeeper snorted. "I thought you might. You'll have the stale leftovers from last night, and nothing else."

The criminal accepted the food gratefully. The innkeeper brought it to him on a plate that might have been unwashed, then wrapped some more of the food up and placed it into his pack. The criminal thanked him for that as well. As he ate, the innkeeper gave him the directions to the smithy.

By the time he finished his meal and stepped outside, the sun was fully up and the world was properly lit. Morning mist rolled over the cobblestone streets. Tall black posts rose up every thirty yards, their night-flames still flickering in their glass domes. The town was not quite awake yet; only a few men and women were out and about. They moved sluggishly, as though they were still half-asleep.

The criminal had no time for sluggishness, and so he walked quite quickly. His black robes dragged behind him, scraping the ground as he went. _Soon it will grow dirty and tattered_ , he thought, frowning. Then his frown turned to a smile as he realized his foolishness. He had grown accustomed to tidy things in Paradise, but he was no longer a citizen there. _I'll soon run into dirtier things than an unwashed robe._

The first of those dirtier things came even more quickly than he thought possible. As the criminal stepped down an alleyway on his way to the smithy, he heard a small, squeaky noise in the shadows. Whirling his head around and stopping, he saw that it was a pokémon. A poochyena, to be more specific. Its mouth was open in a yawn. The poochyena was a young little thing, with matted fur half-coated with grime. It was very thin.

 _A stray_ , the criminal knew. It must have been abandoned here, either by its owner or its parents. He looked at it, and once it was finished with its yawn, it stared back at him with wide, red eyes. It seemed that it had only just woken up. Suddenly its tail began to wag and the poochyena rose to a stand. It trotted over to the criminal with its tongue lolling out of its mouth.

The criminal kneeled to greet it. Now that it was so close, he could see that the poochyena really was just a pup. It couldn't have been more than two months old.

He began to pet it, and it responded by licking his hand and wagging its tail even harder. The criminal thought of the five empty pokéballs that he carried. Almost without thinking about it, he pulled his pack off of his shoulders, unzipped it, pulled out a ball, and considered the poochyena, which stared at the pokéball curiously.

 _No_ , he thought sadly. "Sorry, pup," he told it, as if it could understand him. "I only have these six pokéballs, and I doubt I'll get any more. Back in Paradise, I'd have taken you along in a heartbeat, but now…no, I need a _strong_ team if I'm to overcome the Darkness." _Overcome the Darkness?_ said a voice deep in his mind. _Fool, you have no chance at all of surviving this journey_.

But of course the poochyena could not hear his thoughts, and it didn't seem to have been listening to his words, either. It had buried its snout in the criminal's pack, and now it was sniffing at his things greedily. Its muscles tensed and then it began to struggle to pull something out. The criminal watched, amused. He didn't realize what it was trying to steal until it was out in the open. The poochyena had gotten its jaws around a loaf of bread, and the thick brown napkins which the innkeeper had wrapped tightly around it.

"Oh, come on, none of that," the criminal said. He took the bread from the pokémon. "I need this just as badly as you do."

The poochyena whined.

He sighed. "I've never been able to say no to a cute face." The criminal peeled off the napkins, tore off a small chunk of the bread, and held it out. The poochyena devoured it happily. Then the criminal wrapped up the food (not nearly as well as the innkeeper had done), put it back in his pack, and rose.

Feeding the poochyena proved to be a mistake. As he continued down the alleyway, it followed at his heels, so closely that it was almost tripping over his robes.

"I can't give you any more," the criminal told it. "And I can't take you with me, either. Go on, beg from somebody else."

But the poochyena just cocked its head, grinned, and continued to keep pace with him. He hoped that it would eventually grow bored and return to the alley, but it never did, and the criminal didn't have the heart to force the pup away.

It didn't take him much longer to reach the smithy's shop. The morning mists were gone by then, and the streets were busier as well. The fires in the posts had all been extinguished.

"Now, look here," said the criminal to the poochyena. "I can't have you following me inside this shop and tracking mud and dirt all over the place. The last thing I want is to get on the smithy's bad side. We'll have to part ways now."

The poochyena whined, just as it had done when it was begging for the bread. A ray of sunlight caught in its red eyes, causing them to twinkle brilliantly and innocently.

"You're really going to make me waste one of my pokéballs on you, aren't you?"

The poochyena cocked its head.

Sighing, the criminal pulled one of the empty balls from his pack. "This is what you want, isn't it? You want to come with me?"

The poochyena may not have understood the words, but it at least seemed to understand the implication behind them. It stepped forward, yapping happily, its tail wagging harder than ever.

"Oh, fine," the criminal grumbled, then pressed the button on the pokéball. A beam of bright light erupted from the ball and ensnared the poochyena. Then the pup was gone, the ball clicked, and the criminal officially carried two pokémon with him. He placed the pokéball into his pocket, right next to the one which held his other friend. Then he turned and stepped through the door into the smithy's shop.

Back in Paradise, the criminal had visited several blacksmiths. Their stores had been places of smoke and ovens and molten iron. Young boys, apprenticed to the smiths, had pounded steel constantly, and their hammers had filled the air with sharp, loud noise that grated at your ears. Those stores had always been warm and sweaty, and the criminal had always wanted to leave at the earliest opportunity.

This shop was not like those other ones. The air here was perfectly cool (for it was early March, and winter was still on its way out). The walls were made not of rock and steel, but of wood. Shelves went up and down throughout the room, each one filled with all sorts of knives and swords and other such things. Pegs jutted from the walls, and on them hung even more weapons: bows made with painted wood and bows made with polished steel; elaborately crafted shields held in place by their handles; even a longsword with a black blade and a ruby-encrusted hilt. There were no other customers besides the criminal, though.

The smithy's counter was set up directly to the right of the front door. He was a much younger man than the criminal had been expecting. His hair was brown, short, and scruffy. So was his beard. He sat in a chair with his legs up on the counter, and he held a longbow, already knocked, in one hand. The smithy's mouth was open as if he had meant to greet the criminal, but then his eyes flicked downward and he saw his black robe and collar. Perhaps instinctively, the smithy gave a light pull on the bowstring.

The criminal had almost forgotten about his collar, but now that attention had been brought to it, he realized once again how uncomfortable it really was. His neck was sweaty and chafed underneath the metal.

"Looking for something, sir?" the smithy asked politely. His grip on the bowstring loosened. Not all the way, the criminal noticed.

He began to wonder if the other man was not a smithy at all, but a mere dealer of arms who was entirely unskilled in the art of metalworking. It would have been rude to say so aloud, though, and so the criminal decided to bite his tongue about all that. Instead, he gave the smithy the innkeeper's name, and explained how he had been told to come here.

"Ah, that old man sent you to me?" The smithy finally lowered his bow, then took his feet off of the counter and stood. "An old family friend, he is. Well, I don't suppose you can be _too_ bad, if he's vouching for you. How'd you earn that collar?"

"I'd rather not talk about it." The criminal wondered how many times he would hear that question asked in the coming weeks.

"Ah." The smithy rounded the counter, then walked to one of the shelves and began to shuffle through the weapons there. "A word from the innkeeper won't buy you a knife, I'm afraid, but I suppose it's enough for a discount. You _do_ have money, don't you?"

"Some," said the criminal. "Not much."

"Then you won't have much steel." He pulled a blade from the shelf. It was even smaller than a kitchen knife, but even from a distance the criminal could see that it was made of quality steel. "Let's see how much you can give me for this."

He pulled the gold coins from his pack and frowned at them. It was a pitiful amount of money compared to the riches he had once had in Paradise.

They spent the next fifteen minutes bartering over the price of the knife. Once they had finally come to an agreement (about half of the coins in the criminal's possession), the smithy collected the money, sharpened the blade with a small whetstone, then offered the hilt to the criminal. If he had a belt, he would have kept the knife there, but he didn't, so he dropped it into one of the empty pockets on the outside of his pack.

"Don't suppose you need anything else?" the smithy said, turning the coins over in his hand.

"Actually," the criminal said, "do you have any black paint, or ink, or coal, or anything like that?" He took the poochyena's pokéball out of his pocket.

Minutes later, he departed from the smithy's store with the pokéball still in his hand. There was now a streak of black ink on the white part of the ball.

The criminal made his way back to the red road which ran through the town, and which would lead him to the next town, and to the one after that, and eventually to the wilderness beyond all civilization. The road did not stretch all the way to the Darkness, he knew, but it would take him close.

 _Time to go_ , he knew. His collar would not allow him to stay here for much longer. He was not tired or hungry, his pack was full of food, and his water bottles had been refilled. The criminal even felt a little bit eager to move onward.

As he stepped down the red road and out of the town, he pulled the brown-streaked pokéball from his pocket and pressed the button. The noctowl burst from the ball in a blast of light. It looked about curiously, stretched its wings, then leapt up and landed on the criminal's shoulder. Its talons dug lightly into his robes and the flesh underneath.

He stroked the noctowl's head, and it nuzzled his hand in return. The criminal didn't want to keep it out for too long; it would grow hungry and thirsty out here in the real world. But it seemed appropriate that his old friend should begin this walk with him.


End file.
